December 26, 2018 • 36 mins
We’re taking a look at Francisco Franco and the Spanish Civil War. We've talked about Spain’s parliament voting to exhume the remains of dictator Francisco Franco and relocate them to a state-funded mausoleum, and we’re giving that entire situation more context.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Nee Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. We are
kicking off Unearthed this season with a look at Francisco
(00:21):
Franco and the Spanish Civil War. These are topics that
have come up Unearthed a lot of times at this point.
In particular, we have talked about the discovery of mass
graves in Spain connected to the war and efforts to
identify the bodies in them and return them to family
members wherever possible. We have also talked last year about
(00:42):
Spain's parliament voting to exhume the remains of Dictator Francisco
Franco and relocate them somewhere. At that time, they were
talking about a state funded mausoleum. The Spanish Civil War
was also part of our Six Impossible episodes this past June,
when we talked about the vacuation of about four thousand
children after the bombing of Gernika. Every time any of
(01:06):
this comes up in an episode, I think we really
need to get into more detail on that because we
have not talked about a ton of Spanish history and
since debate over what to do with Franco's remains has
continued to make headlines all throughout. I mean, I think
I have like ten articles about it pinned on our
Unearthed pin board. This seemed like a good time to
(01:29):
finally do that, So we are going to talk about
his career both as a military man and a dictator,
and why there is so much contention about what to
do regarding his final resting place. And this is also
one of those topics that could really be a whole series.
You could launch an entire podcast that's only about the
run up to the Spanish Civil War and then the
(01:50):
war itself and then the dictatorship that followed it. So
that's really our our focus is his military service, his
time as a dictator, and and why I there's such
controversy over exactly what to do with his remains. Francisco
Franco Baha Monday was born December four and l Ferrell
in northwestern Spain. For generations, the men and his family
(02:13):
had served in the navy, and his father was an
officer in the Spanish Naval Administrative Corps. Franco's plan was
to join the navy as well, and he started studying
at the Naval Preparatory Academy when he was twelve, but
the Spanish Navy was still really struggling to recover from
the Spanish American War at that point, including the loss
of pretty much its whole Pacific fleet at the Battle
(02:36):
of Manila Bay. As a result, the Naval Academy canceled
its entrance exams the year that Franco was supposed to
take them, so he shifted over to the army instead
and started attending the Infantry Academy in nineteen o seven
when he was fourteen. Franco didn't have much in common
with his classmates, and later on the same was true
for his fellow soldiers. He was small, and he had
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a high voice ace and he was bullied for it.
He also had a reputation for being extremely serious and reserved,
while the other men tended to spend their free time
drinking and looking for women. In this way, Franco was
a lot more like his mother than his father. His
father was known as an eccentric womanizer who was too
casual with money, while his mother was a devout Catholic
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who was serious and austere. Franca's performance at the Naval
academy was competent, but it wasn't exceptional. After he graduated,
he spent a couple of years stationed in his hometown
before being granted a transfer that he had requested to Morocco.
He was transferred there in nineteen twelve, when he was
nineteen years old. A small part of northern Morocco had
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become Spanish territory during the Scramble for Africa. To quickly
recap that the Scramble for Africa spanned the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, as multiple European nations divided Africa
among themselves without regard to the nation's empires and kingdoms
that were already there, and without any input from any
(04:03):
actual Africans. Spain's control of northern Morocco was part of
a very complicated deal in which Britain, France, and Italy
were all trying to secure their own interest in parts
of Northern Africa, and the end, most of Morocco was
under French control, but the northern part closest to Spain,
just right across the water from the southern tip of Spain,
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connected to both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, that part
was Spanish territory. After arriving in Morocco, Franco was promoted
to first lieutenant in command of a Moroccan cavalry regiment,
and he approached his command the same way he had
approached his time at the academy. He was competent, professional, prepared, serious,
and honest. In nineteen fifteen, at the age of twenty two,
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he was promoted to captain, making him the youngest captain
in the Spanish Army. This wasn't just because of his competence, though,
It was also because he put a bigger priority on
self present nation than some of his fellow officers did,
so he moved up through the ranks as they were
wounded or killed. He continued to do this until he
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was seriously wounded in nineteen sixteen and transferred back to
Spain to recover. While he was there, he met Carmen
Polo E Martinez Valdez, and the two of them plans
to get married, but in nineteen twenty Franco was made
second in command of the Spanish Foreign Legion and sent
back to Morocco, so the two of them didn't actually
get married until nineteen twenty three. Later on, they also
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had one daughter, Franco's second stretch of military service in
Morocco mostly took place during a war between Spanish colonial
forces and the Riffian people. You will also see them
referred to simply as the riff This was a five
year war that began after the Riffian people tried to
break away into an independent republic. Spain faced a massive
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defeat in July of ninety one, losing between eight thousand
and ten thousand men and being forced to retreat eat
A combination of French and Spanish forces put down the
uprising in nineteen five. Franco was one of the most
vocal and visible Spanish officers and this extremely bloody war,
and he was increasingly celebrated for that back in Spain.
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Along the way, he was also promoted to lieutenant colonel
and made commander of the Spanish Foreign Legion. He was
promoted to brigadier general in nineteen twenty six, making him
the youngest brigadier general in all of Europe. Two years later,
he was made director of Spain's General Military Academy. Throughout
Franco's life, up to this point, Spain had been a
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monarchy ruled by King Alfonso. Alfonso's father had died before
he was born, so he was a monarch from birth,
although his mother acted as regent until nineteen o two.
Since eighteen seventy six, Spain's constitution had also required government
controlled elections that rotated through liberal and conservative parties. The
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setup sounds really k addic to me, and on top
of that, it was also prone to manipulation and corruption,
and by the nineteen twenties things were getting worse. A
military coup in ninety three established Miguel Primo de Rivera
as Prime Minister. He ran the Spanish government as a dictatorship.
Another series of attempted coups after that tried but failed
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to remove him from office. Spain's colonial activities and Morocco
were also very expensive and very bloody, and Spain was
really not getting a lot to show from all of that.
There were repeated assassination attempts against both King Alfonso and
his wife Eugenia, and then the Wall Street crash of
ninety nine, combined with ongoing economic issues to spark the
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Great Depression. All of these factors ultimately led to both
Primo de Rivera and King Alfonso losing support, including the
support of the military Primo de Rivera was forced out
of office shortly before dying in ninety and the Key
was forced to leave Spain on April fourteenth, ninety one,
although he did not formally abdicate. Because Spain had very
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briefly been a republic from eighteen seventies three to eighteen
seventy four, the period after Alfonso's departure is known as
the Second Republic. Becoming a republic did not fix Spain's problems, though,
Spain's newly democratic government started trying to roll out a
series of mostly pretty liberal reforms. Most people in rural
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parts of Spain were landless laborers, so efforts were made
to redistribute land to them. The new government also tried
to reform the education system and reduce the power of
the Catholic Church. It also tried to drastically reduce military
spending and the size of the military. This affected Francisco
Franco directly. The General Military Academy was dissolved and he
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was placed on inactive status. The Spanish government faced increasing
criticisms over all of these reforms. They tended to happen
very slowly due to a range of issues, including bureaucracy
and the Great Depression. Eventually, they were unpopular on every side.
Those on the political right objected to the proposed reforms
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happening at all, while those on the left thought they
weren't ambitious enough or happening fast enough. Then, in nineteen
thirty three, Conservatives gained a majority in the Spanish Parliament
and started rolling back what few reforms had been made
in the earlier administration. Franco was restored to his former
position in the army, and a year later he was
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promoted again. In nineteen thirty four, miners went on strike
in the Asturious region of Spain, and this strike progressed
into a revolt. The revolt was violently suppressed by the
Spanish military, and once again Franco was praised for his
role in putting down an uprising. Franco got a lot
of praise for putting down uprisings. That was like one
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of the things people loved best about him. But by
that point things were really unraveling in Spain. Speaking in
very broad strokes, people were increasingly politically divided and polarized
between the left and the right. Groups, parties and factions
on each side started coalescing into unified movements on the
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left was the Popular Front and on the right was
the National Front. In the February sixteenth, ninety six election,
the Popular Front won the majority in the Spanish Parliament.
The newly elected government was concerned about rising nationalism within
Spain's military. The military was purged of suspected conspirators, and
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some high ranking officers were transferred to remote territory to
get them out of the way. One of these officers
who was transferred was Franco. Throughout his career, his actions
had been really clearly aligned with the more nationalist side
of Spanish politics, but he had never vocally taken a
side in politics, and he had not participated in the
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earlier political coup is that the military had tried to undertake.
After the nineteen thirty six election, though he thought the
political situation in Spain was really precarious, he started appealing
to this new government to declare a state of emergency.
He was instead transferred to the Canary Islands off the
coast of northern Africa to get him out of the way.
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He would return to Spain during the Spanish Civil War,
which we were going to talk about after we first
pause for a little sponsor break. From the creation of
the Second Republic until nineteen thirty six, the Spanish government
really struggled to try to hold the country together during
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this series of increasingly turbulent elections and the creation of
these coalitions among the nation's various political parties and groups,
and as we noted before the break, people had become
extremely polarized. The nation's military leaders tended to be aligned
with the National Front. After the nineteen thirty six election,
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they feared the influence of communists and socialists in Spain
and objected to the reforms and policies that the new
government started making. As a result, generals under Emilio Mola
started planning another coup. At first, Franco was not eager
to have any part of all this. Like we said earlier,
his actions were obviously more in line with the nationalist
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side of things, but he had avoided taking a public
political position, and he had already gotten a punitive transfer
to the Canary Islands. He just didn't want to get
caught up in an attempted coup that had the potential
to fail and then completely destroy his career. But as
planning went on and it started to look more like
Mola's coup might be successful, Franco changed his mind. The
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coup was set to take place on July eighteenth, ninety six,
with the uprising beginning within the army in Morocco on
the day before. Franco initially broadcast a manifesto from the
Canary Islands, but soon returned to Morocco to take command
of the Army of Africa, which would become the Nationalist Army.
This coup is also cited as where the term fifth
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column comes from. Uh That term came up, I think
in our Executive Order nineties sixty six episode with people
in the United States saying that they feared a fifth
column of Japanese insurgents. So Emilio Mala had four columns
that would head towards Madrid, and then he described that
there was also a fifth column of supporters in Madrid
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who would rise up and fight with them when they
got there. However, the coup as planned was not successful.
The Nationalist force was unable to take Madrid, setting off
almost three years of devastating civil war. Speaking again in
broad strokes, this was a war between the left and
the right. On the right where the nationalists they tended
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to be Catholic and affluent. A lot of them owned
land or businesses. A lot of Nationalists were also monarchists,
and Nationalists were backed by the Spanish military. Then on
the left were the Republicans, also known as the Loyalists,
which largely included people in the middle class, along with
laborers in both agriculture and in the urban centers. The
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Loyalists side was loyal to the government that had been
democratically elected in nineteen thirty six, while the nationalists wanted
to overthrow that government. This war was incredibly bloody and brutal.
Twenty seven nations signed a non intervention agreement, but Germany, Italy,
and the Soviet Union disregarded it. Germany and Italy sided
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with the Nationalists, and the Soviet Union sided with the Republicans.
All three nations provided military aid to their respective sides.
When the Army of Africa was moved from Morocco to Spain,
it was done with aircraft from Germany and Italy. There
was also the bombing of civilian targets that we talked
about in that Six Impossible Episodes earlier this year. As
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the war on individual cities and towns fell and were
retaken with huge casualties on both sides, including amongst civilians.
So the nationalist force would take a city and execute
Republican supporters, only for the Republican force to do the
same thing after taking it back, or the reverse would
happen regardless, though the death toll was immense and the
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civil war was marked by atrocities on both sides of
the fighting. On October one, ninety six, the nationalist side
named Franco its head of state. By that point, the
other leading generals had been killed in combat or plane crashes.
He started further consolidating the various parties and factions to
try to make one unified nationalist side. One of these,
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the Falone or Phalanx Party, became an official nationalist state
party in April of ninety seven. Four months later, thanks
to the nationalists pro Catholic leanings, the Vatican formally recognized
Franco as the Spanish head of state. At that point,
the International Brigades had also started arriving in Spain. The
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International Brigades were, as the name suggests, volunteers from numerous nations.
A lot of the organization effort had been spearheaded by
the Soviet Union. These were people who came to Spain
from all these other places to fight on the side
of the loyalists. By the end of the war, more
than sixty thousand volunteers had served with the International brigades.
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Most of them were from France, although people came from
roughly fifty countries. A lot of the people who volunteered
to fight where socialists, communists, students, and labor organizers. George
Orwell also fought with the Republican army and wrote homage
to Catalonia about the experience. By the spring of nineteen
thirty nine, Franco's nationalists were headed toward victory. Republican soldiers
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and civilians had started fleeing towards France. Catalonia was the
last major Republican stronghold aside from Madrid, and after it fell,
the Republican side surrendered. Franco's force entered Madrid on March
twenty eight, and the war was formally over on April first,
ninety nine. The estimated death toll from the Spanish Civil
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War is five hundred thousand people, although the Nationalists placed
the figure at more like a million people immediately after
the war was over. Spain's population at the time was
about twenty five million people, so about two percent of
the population was killed just in the war, but the
bloodshed didn't end when the war was over. As many
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as a hundred thousand people disappeared after the war as
the nationalist regime started executing people with Republicans sympathies. Hundreds
of thousands more were made political prisoners. Republicans were also exiled,
and people all across the political spectrum died of starvation
and disease after the war or left Spain in the
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wake of it. Franco became Spain's ruler in a government
that technically had a parliamentary system but was really a
military dictatorship. The parliament was more like an advisory body
than an actual legislative government branch, and Franco was the
sole authority over policies and decisions. Franco's government restored power
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to the Catholic Church and did not tolerate dissent. Laws
restricted civic freedoms, including the freedom of speech, and people
who opposed the government were tried in military courts and
given sentences that were harsh and arbitrary. On September one,
ninety nine, just five months after the end of the
Spanish Civil War, Germany invaded Poland, which marks the beginning
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of Europe's involvement in World War Two, and it seemed
likely that Spain would ally with the access powers of
Italy and Germany, especially given Italy and Germany's military assistance
on the nationalist side during the Spanish Civil War. Spain's
dictatorship was also more aligned with Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy than it was with the Allied Powers, but Franco
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proved to have the same kind of self preservation that
he did back in his early years of army service.
He met with both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and
discussed what it would take for Spain to join the
war on their side. Spain wanted territory after the war
was over, including Gibraltar and Morocco, and Spain also wanted
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huge amounts of assistance to help with the recovery from
the Civil War. Neither Italy nor Germany was willing to
agree to Spain's terms, finding them way too demanding. Hitler
is widely reported to have said after this meeting that
he'd quote rather have three or four teeth pulled than
ever have to have a meeting with Franco again. So
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Spain sympathized with the Access Powers but mostly stayed neutral
in World War Two. But as it seemed increasingly likely
that the Access Powers were going to lose, Franco started
making gestures to the Allies. For example, Franco allowed Allied
pilots who were shot down free passage through Spain so
that they could get back to their units via Portugal.
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He allowed Jewish refugees similar passage through Spain. Spain's relative
neutrality during World War Two was not enough to gain
the trust of other world leaders after the war was over,
though Franco was described as the last surviving Fascist dictator. Consequently,
Spain was barred from joining the United Nations, and the
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other United Nations member states withdrew their ambassadors out of Madrid.
Spain was also left out of the Marshal Plan that
was meant to aid Western Europe's recovery after the war
was over. However, Spain's international isolation did not last very
long as the Cold War grew between the United States
and the Soviet Union. Franco was vocally anti communist, as
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we noted in our episode on the mirraor Ball Sisters.
The United States was willing to overlook a lot when
it came to nations that opposed communism. The United States
and Spain started re establishing more normal diplomatic relationships in ninety.
In nineteen fifty three, the two nations signed a military
Assistance packed that involved allowing the US to build military
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bases in Spain in exchange for economic aid. Spain was
allowed to join the United Nations in nineteen fifty five.
By that point, Spain was at least technically a monarchy again.
The NINTI seven Law of Succession, which was passed in
part to make Spain's government more palatable to other nations,
had established that Spain was a monarchy and that Franco
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was just acting as a regents until naming a successor,
but this law didn't set any kind of timeline for
that to happen. It gave Franco the freedom to be
regent's kind of in quotation marks for life. In the
nineteen fifties and sixties, student protests led Franco's regime to
relax some of its more authoritarian policies at least somewhat,
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but there was still ongoing resistance to Franco's rule along
with violence from separatists. This was particularly true among Basque nationalists,
but to be clear, the Basques were not the only
separatists in Spain. Spain's remaining colonies also pressed for independence,
with Morocco becoming independent of both Spain and France in
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nineteen fifty six. In nineteen sixty nine, Franco finally named
his successor, Prince Juan Carlos, the grandson of Alfonso. Franco
continued acting as regent until nineteen seventy three, although he
continued to work behind the scenes after that until his
health prevented it. He died in Madrid on November twentieth,
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nineteen seventy five, after more than a year of very
serious illnesses. Franco's burial place is what brought us to
doing an episode on him today, and we're going to
get to that after we pause for a little sponsor break.
After Juan Carlos became King of Spain, he and his
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Prime Minister, Adolpho Suarez Gonzalez started reforming the Spanish government.
A new constitution was passed on December six with almost
unanimous support. This constitution established Spain as a constitutional monarchy,
with the monarch in an a political role. That constitution
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also establishes that Spanish citizens are equal under the law,
and it includes fundamental rights and freedoms like the freedom
of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of privacy. This was,
of course, not the end of strife in Spain, but
one Carlos was able to make sweeping changes that modernized Spain,
protected civil rights, and restored democracy. Ironically, a big factor
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in his power to do that was that he was
following Francisco Franco as head of state. Franco had given
himself very broad powers, and after following him, Juan Carlos
used that power to make big changes. Yeah, he basically
used that power that Franco had had passed on to
him to do the opposite it of what Franco had
done during his time as dictator, and these reforms were
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really not what a lot of people expected of the
new king. Juan Carlos had very vocally praised Franco when
he was named successor, and then after Franco's death, he
made the Franco family part of the Spanish nobility. So
Francisco Franco's daughter was the first Duchess of Franco, but
Juan Carlos had also started secretly meeting and planning with
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Democratic reformers long before Franco even died. The king also
oversaw Franco's funeral and his burial in the Valley of
the Fallen outside of Madrid. The Valley of the Fallen
is an immense monument whose construction started a year after
the Spanish Civil War ended, and it went on for
twenty years. It's a basilica and crypt at the foot
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of a cliff, with a massive granite cross on top
of the cliff. It's really hard to describe the sheer
immensity of this whole thing, and during its construction, Franco
had described I this monument and it's building as an
act of atonement and reconciliation, one that was meant to
bring Spain together. However, it was also built by Republican
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political prisoners. The circumstances of that building are described as
everywhere from forced labor to political prisoners being promised time
off of their sentences if they worked on this being built.
It was also intended from the start to basically be
a monument to Franco and to be his own massive tomb.
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After the monument was finished, the bodies of thirty three thousand,
eight hundred forty seven people who had been killed during
the war were exhumed and reinterred in the surrounding forest
to increase the scale of the monument. This was often
done without the permission or knowledge of the families, and
records were also really spotty, so in many cases people
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whose family members remains were relocated now have no idea
exactly where they are, and there are ongoing legal battles
to exhume, identify, and return people's remains. They're really heartbreaking
stories and all of this, and as far as people
who were like, Okay, I'm looking for my grandfather, meticulously
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tracing the process of where their grandfather was, finally figuring
out exactly where he was killed and where the people
killed in that battle were buried, only to be told
that everyone there was just dug up and transported to
the Valley of the Fallen without anybody keeping track of
exactly where. Only two people, though, are buried inside the
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church itself. At the Valley of the Fallen, there's Francisco
Franco and then there's the Falange party leader Jose Antonio
Primo de Rivera, and today admission into This church is
only supposed to be for religious purposes, but for decades
people came to leave flowers on Franco's grave, or to
spit on it, or vandalize it or try to blow
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it up. People visit the Valley of the Falling because
they lost family members in the war, but they also
visit annually on Franco's birthday to memorialize him. Over the years,
there have been repeated proposals to exhume Francisco's remains and
move them somewhere else, to a more modest location that
isn't effectively a monument to a dictator, someplace that wouldn't
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become a pilgrimage site for fascists. But those proposals have
proven to be incredibly controversial. Unlike Germany and Italy, Spain
did not suffer a military defeat during World War Two.
There was no war crimes investigation, no formal attempt to
seek justice and atonement after the Civil War was over. Instead,
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the exact opposite happened. In ninety seven, political leaders agreed
to what was called the Pact of Forgetting. Sometimes this
is described as a packed to not ever discuss the
Civil War again, but that's not exactly right. It was
more like a negotiation among the various political factions to
not let the war get in the way of working
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together to form a government, and not to invest government
resources into trying to resolve the past. This was followed
by a nineteen seventy seven amnesty law that legally formalized
that agreement. This law released political prisoners and allowed people
who had been forced out of Spain to return, but
it also protected the people who committed wartime atrocities from
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ever being prosecuted. All this means that nobody on any
side was ever held accountable for the many atrocities of
the Spanish Civil War and the fascist regime that followed,
including Franco. There was no investigation, no truth commission, no
civic commemoration of milestone anniversaries of the war. Spain instead
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just tried to leave the past in the past and
move on. That has started to change only very recently.
Spain's two thousand seven Law of Historical Memory condemned Franco
in his regime and established terms for removing some monuments
from the Franco era. It also recognized the people who
fought on both sides of the war and established the
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victims of the war and the dictatorship and their descendants
could seek restitution. The attempts to identify bodies in mass
graves that we've talked about on the show before mostly
started after the passage of this two thousand seven law.
Just this year, Spain announced plans to establish a truth commission.
The Historical Memory Law and legislation to exhume Franco's remains
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and similar steps have generally been taken when Socialists have
had the majority in Spain's government, and that's been over
the objection of Spain's conservative parties. Conversely, when conservative parties
have had power, they've either tried to roll back those
earlier laws or stopped supporting them or allocating money in
the budget to carry them out. And a lot of
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people feel like the Historical Memory Law and other similar
legislat action is just digging up a horror from the
past that should be left there. All of this has
contributed to Spain being really divided over the legacy of
Francisco Franco and how he should be remembered. On one
side are people who consider him a fascist dictator whose
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regime murdered or imprisoned hundreds of thousands of people following
an attempted coup against a democratically elected government. On the
other side are people who think this attempted coup was
a necessary intervention against communism and that the Republicans would
have treated their opponents the exact same way if they
had won, and since the Republican forces also committed massacres
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and atrocities during the war, there are also a lot
of people living in Spain whose family members were killed
by the loyalists and not by Franco's regime, because Franco's
dictatorship was motivated more by a military style efficiency than
by a specific political doctrine. Another argument was that he
was sort of not that bad as fascist dictators go.
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This reminds me of growing up in North Carolina and
the way we would talk about slavery and history class,
and it was sort of like, well, we didn't have
nearly as many slaves as South Carolina, so it's not
that bad, which is just not a very valid argument.
There's a whole lot of he was a dictator, but
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he was a good dictator, or he was authoritarian but
not totalitarian. His supporters also note that he never smoked
or drank and is never known to have had an
extramarital affair, and they point to this as evidence that
he was a moral man rather than being a war criminal. Plus,
Spain's economy started booming in the nineteen sixties, which continued
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until Franco's death. This period is nicknamed the Spanish Miracle.
Franco himself didn't really have anything to do with it,
apart from handing the country's economic leadership over to relatively
young ministers who liberalized the economy, but it still means
that some people remember him as having finally rescued Spain
from the economic devastation that followed the Civil War and
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that went on for decades afterward. Spain has also faced
a huge economic crisis over the past decade, so many
people who remember the sixties remember them as a time
when Franco brought prosperity which democracy has now taken away. Plus,
all those decades leading up to the Spanish Civil War
were very turbulent, with increasing division and a series of
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coups and attempted cus before the war itself even started.
By comparison, Franco's dictatorship was kind of calm. All of
this is complicated by the fact that Spain has never
had a thorough accounting of the war and Franco's dictatorship,
and it is divisive. One poll conducted in July asked
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are you in favor of removing the remains of Francisco
Franco from the Valley of the Fallen? Just under forty
one percent said yes. To the question do you think
it's a good time to address the issue, more than
fifty said no. It's also really still unfolding. Franco's descendants
have said that they would like to have him reinterred
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in the family crypt at La Almudena Cathedral in Madrid
with full military honors, but that plan has brought on
criticism that it would just make his burial place even
more accessible and just as likely to be made into
basically a new shrine, a shrine that would become a
monument to fascism. And we are recording this episode on
(33:36):
December eleven, at which point the issue is still not settled,
which means that I fully believe that three days from now, Yeah,
some huge news story will break that will change everything
that we have just said about where it currently stands. Yeah,
it's that is a trend. When we record episodes that
reach into the current era. Yet it's pretty much immediately
(33:57):
after we closed the door on record NG then suddenly
there's brand new news. I mean, the most recent articles
that I read about this we're from yesterday and we're
you know, we went and we go into the studio
at ten o'clock on Tuesday mornings, So it was like
three o'clock yesterday afternoon was my last news update on
the status of the burial place of Francisco Franco or
(34:18):
in all way until about twenty minutes after the episode publishes.
Since we're prepping for holidays, we're prepping and invain. Yeah,
so so we'll be like trying to have Christmas and
madly trying to uh acknowledge that things have shifted. Yep. Completely.
Do you have a little bit of listener mail. I
(34:39):
knew and it is from Katie. Katie says, longtime listener
and huge fan at Katie here. A month ago you
did an episode on Crystal Knock, which later raised the
discussion about the evolution of the name. For that night
last week, I happened to be in Berlin at the
Museum the Topography of Terrors, where coincidentally they were showing
(35:00):
a special exhibit on that night. The exhibit itself was
called Crystal Knocked, but then throughout the text of the
exhibit the event was referred to as Reich's Pogrom Knocked.
I found that interesting and thought you might as well.
They didn't really address the evolution of the name, but
did address how awareness of the event has grown in
the past decades. Attached our photos of the exhibit. Overall,
(35:22):
it was incredibly moving, as the was the museum itself
built over the block that used to contain the headquarters
of the s S and the Gestapo. Also an episode
suggestion in pictures the Gate of Ishtar. So she goes
on to talk about the Gate of Ishtar, and this
email included six really beautiful photographs um of the gate
(35:43):
and then also of parts of that museum exhibit. So
thank you so much, Katie. That was an interesting look
at how a museum in Berlin might address the fact
that people may remember something by one name when that
name is not necessarily the preferred language in Germany. Now,
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast where a history podcast at how
(36:05):
Stuff Works dot com. And then we are all over
social media at miss in History. That's where you'll find
our Facebook, our Pinterest, our Instagram, and our Twitter. You
can come to our website, which is missed in History
dot com, where you will find show notes of all
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and a searchable archive of every episode. And you can
find and subscribe to our podcast on app, podcast, the
(36:26):
I Heart Radio app, and wherever you get podcasts. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Nee Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. We are
kicking off Unearthed this season with a look at Francisco
(00:21):
Franco and the Spanish Civil War. These are topics that
have come up Unearthed a lot of times at this point.
In particular, we have talked about the discovery of mass
graves in Spain connected to the war and efforts to
identify the bodies in them and return them to family
members wherever possible. We have also talked last year about
(00:42):
Spain's parliament voting to exhume the remains of Dictator Francisco
Franco and relocate them somewhere. At that time, they were
talking about a state funded mausoleum. The Spanish Civil War
was also part of our Six Impossible episodes this past June,
when we talked about the vacuation of about four thousand
children after the bombing of Gernika. Every time any of
(01:06):
this comes up in an episode, I think we really
need to get into more detail on that because we
have not talked about a ton of Spanish history and
since debate over what to do with Franco's remains has
continued to make headlines all throughout. I mean, I think
I have like ten articles about it pinned on our
Unearthed pin board. This seemed like a good time to
(01:29):
finally do that, So we are going to talk about
his career both as a military man and a dictator,
and why there is so much contention about what to
do regarding his final resting place. And this is also
one of those topics that could really be a whole series.
You could launch an entire podcast that's only about the
run up to the Spanish Civil War and then the
(01:50):
war itself and then the dictatorship that followed it. So
that's really our our focus is his military service, his
time as a dictator, and and why I there's such
controversy over exactly what to do with his remains. Francisco
Franco Baha Monday was born December four and l Ferrell
in northwestern Spain. For generations, the men and his family
(02:13):
had served in the navy, and his father was an
officer in the Spanish Naval Administrative Corps. Franco's plan was
to join the navy as well, and he started studying
at the Naval Preparatory Academy when he was twelve, but
the Spanish Navy was still really struggling to recover from
the Spanish American War at that point, including the loss
of pretty much its whole Pacific fleet at the Battle
(02:36):
of Manila Bay. As a result, the Naval Academy canceled
its entrance exams the year that Franco was supposed to
take them, so he shifted over to the army instead
and started attending the Infantry Academy in nineteen o seven
when he was fourteen. Franco didn't have much in common
with his classmates, and later on the same was true
for his fellow soldiers. He was small, and he had
(02:59):
a high voice ace and he was bullied for it.
He also had a reputation for being extremely serious and reserved,
while the other men tended to spend their free time
drinking and looking for women. In this way, Franco was
a lot more like his mother than his father. His
father was known as an eccentric womanizer who was too
casual with money, while his mother was a devout Catholic
(03:21):
who was serious and austere. Franca's performance at the Naval
academy was competent, but it wasn't exceptional. After he graduated,
he spent a couple of years stationed in his hometown
before being granted a transfer that he had requested to Morocco.
He was transferred there in nineteen twelve, when he was
nineteen years old. A small part of northern Morocco had
(03:42):
become Spanish territory during the Scramble for Africa. To quickly
recap that the Scramble for Africa spanned the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, as multiple European nations divided Africa
among themselves without regard to the nation's empires and kingdoms
that were already there, and without any input from any
(04:03):
actual Africans. Spain's control of northern Morocco was part of
a very complicated deal in which Britain, France, and Italy
were all trying to secure their own interest in parts
of Northern Africa, and the end, most of Morocco was
under French control, but the northern part closest to Spain,
just right across the water from the southern tip of Spain,
(04:25):
connected to both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, that part
was Spanish territory. After arriving in Morocco, Franco was promoted
to first lieutenant in command of a Moroccan cavalry regiment,
and he approached his command the same way he had
approached his time at the academy. He was competent, professional, prepared, serious,
and honest. In nineteen fifteen, at the age of twenty two,
(04:48):
he was promoted to captain, making him the youngest captain
in the Spanish Army. This wasn't just because of his competence, though,
It was also because he put a bigger priority on
self present nation than some of his fellow officers did,
so he moved up through the ranks as they were
wounded or killed. He continued to do this until he
(05:09):
was seriously wounded in nineteen sixteen and transferred back to
Spain to recover. While he was there, he met Carmen
Polo E Martinez Valdez, and the two of them plans
to get married, but in nineteen twenty Franco was made
second in command of the Spanish Foreign Legion and sent
back to Morocco, so the two of them didn't actually
get married until nineteen twenty three. Later on, they also
(05:31):
had one daughter, Franco's second stretch of military service in
Morocco mostly took place during a war between Spanish colonial
forces and the Riffian people. You will also see them
referred to simply as the riff This was a five
year war that began after the Riffian people tried to
break away into an independent republic. Spain faced a massive
(05:53):
defeat in July of ninety one, losing between eight thousand
and ten thousand men and being forced to retreat eat
A combination of French and Spanish forces put down the
uprising in nineteen five. Franco was one of the most
vocal and visible Spanish officers and this extremely bloody war,
and he was increasingly celebrated for that back in Spain.
(06:17):
Along the way, he was also promoted to lieutenant colonel
and made commander of the Spanish Foreign Legion. He was
promoted to brigadier general in nineteen twenty six, making him
the youngest brigadier general in all of Europe. Two years later,
he was made director of Spain's General Military Academy. Throughout
Franco's life, up to this point, Spain had been a
(06:37):
monarchy ruled by King Alfonso. Alfonso's father had died before
he was born, so he was a monarch from birth,
although his mother acted as regent until nineteen o two.
Since eighteen seventy six, Spain's constitution had also required government
controlled elections that rotated through liberal and conservative parties. The
(06:58):
setup sounds really k addic to me, and on top
of that, it was also prone to manipulation and corruption,
and by the nineteen twenties things were getting worse. A
military coup in ninety three established Miguel Primo de Rivera
as Prime Minister. He ran the Spanish government as a dictatorship.
Another series of attempted coups after that tried but failed
(07:21):
to remove him from office. Spain's colonial activities and Morocco
were also very expensive and very bloody, and Spain was
really not getting a lot to show from all of that.
There were repeated assassination attempts against both King Alfonso and
his wife Eugenia, and then the Wall Street crash of
ninety nine, combined with ongoing economic issues to spark the
(07:43):
Great Depression. All of these factors ultimately led to both
Primo de Rivera and King Alfonso losing support, including the
support of the military Primo de Rivera was forced out
of office shortly before dying in ninety and the Key
was forced to leave Spain on April fourteenth, ninety one,
although he did not formally abdicate. Because Spain had very
(08:07):
briefly been a republic from eighteen seventies three to eighteen
seventy four, the period after Alfonso's departure is known as
the Second Republic. Becoming a republic did not fix Spain's problems, though,
Spain's newly democratic government started trying to roll out a
series of mostly pretty liberal reforms. Most people in rural
(08:28):
parts of Spain were landless laborers, so efforts were made
to redistribute land to them. The new government also tried
to reform the education system and reduce the power of
the Catholic Church. It also tried to drastically reduce military
spending and the size of the military. This affected Francisco
Franco directly. The General Military Academy was dissolved and he
(08:52):
was placed on inactive status. The Spanish government faced increasing
criticisms over all of these reforms. They tended to happen
very slowly due to a range of issues, including bureaucracy
and the Great Depression. Eventually, they were unpopular on every side.
Those on the political right objected to the proposed reforms
(09:13):
happening at all, while those on the left thought they
weren't ambitious enough or happening fast enough. Then, in nineteen
thirty three, Conservatives gained a majority in the Spanish Parliament
and started rolling back what few reforms had been made
in the earlier administration. Franco was restored to his former
position in the army, and a year later he was
(09:34):
promoted again. In nineteen thirty four, miners went on strike
in the Asturious region of Spain, and this strike progressed
into a revolt. The revolt was violently suppressed by the
Spanish military, and once again Franco was praised for his
role in putting down an uprising. Franco got a lot
of praise for putting down uprisings. That was like one
(09:56):
of the things people loved best about him. But by
that point things were really unraveling in Spain. Speaking in
very broad strokes, people were increasingly politically divided and polarized
between the left and the right. Groups, parties and factions
on each side started coalescing into unified movements on the
(10:16):
left was the Popular Front and on the right was
the National Front. In the February sixteenth, ninety six election,
the Popular Front won the majority in the Spanish Parliament.
The newly elected government was concerned about rising nationalism within
Spain's military. The military was purged of suspected conspirators, and
(10:36):
some high ranking officers were transferred to remote territory to
get them out of the way. One of these officers
who was transferred was Franco. Throughout his career, his actions
had been really clearly aligned with the more nationalist side
of Spanish politics, but he had never vocally taken a
side in politics, and he had not participated in the
(10:58):
earlier political coup is that the military had tried to undertake.
After the nineteen thirty six election, though he thought the
political situation in Spain was really precarious, he started appealing
to this new government to declare a state of emergency.
He was instead transferred to the Canary Islands off the
coast of northern Africa to get him out of the way.
(11:20):
He would return to Spain during the Spanish Civil War,
which we were going to talk about after we first
pause for a little sponsor break. From the creation of
the Second Republic until nineteen thirty six, the Spanish government
really struggled to try to hold the country together during
(11:41):
this series of increasingly turbulent elections and the creation of
these coalitions among the nation's various political parties and groups,
and as we noted before the break, people had become
extremely polarized. The nation's military leaders tended to be aligned
with the National Front. After the nineteen thirty six election,
(12:02):
they feared the influence of communists and socialists in Spain
and objected to the reforms and policies that the new
government started making. As a result, generals under Emilio Mola
started planning another coup. At first, Franco was not eager
to have any part of all this. Like we said earlier,
his actions were obviously more in line with the nationalist
(12:24):
side of things, but he had avoided taking a public
political position, and he had already gotten a punitive transfer
to the Canary Islands. He just didn't want to get
caught up in an attempted coup that had the potential
to fail and then completely destroy his career. But as
planning went on and it started to look more like
Mola's coup might be successful, Franco changed his mind. The
(12:47):
coup was set to take place on July eighteenth, ninety six,
with the uprising beginning within the army in Morocco on
the day before. Franco initially broadcast a manifesto from the
Canary Islands, but soon returned to Morocco to take command
of the Army of Africa, which would become the Nationalist Army.
This coup is also cited as where the term fifth
(13:09):
column comes from. Uh That term came up, I think
in our Executive Order nineties sixty six episode with people
in the United States saying that they feared a fifth
column of Japanese insurgents. So Emilio Mala had four columns
that would head towards Madrid, and then he described that
there was also a fifth column of supporters in Madrid
(13:31):
who would rise up and fight with them when they
got there. However, the coup as planned was not successful.
The Nationalist force was unable to take Madrid, setting off
almost three years of devastating civil war. Speaking again in
broad strokes, this was a war between the left and
the right. On the right where the nationalists they tended
(13:52):
to be Catholic and affluent. A lot of them owned
land or businesses. A lot of Nationalists were also monarchists,
and Nationalists were backed by the Spanish military. Then on
the left were the Republicans, also known as the Loyalists,
which largely included people in the middle class, along with
laborers in both agriculture and in the urban centers. The
(14:14):
Loyalists side was loyal to the government that had been
democratically elected in nineteen thirty six, while the nationalists wanted
to overthrow that government. This war was incredibly bloody and brutal.
Twenty seven nations signed a non intervention agreement, but Germany, Italy,
and the Soviet Union disregarded it. Germany and Italy sided
(14:36):
with the Nationalists, and the Soviet Union sided with the Republicans.
All three nations provided military aid to their respective sides.
When the Army of Africa was moved from Morocco to Spain,
it was done with aircraft from Germany and Italy. There
was also the bombing of civilian targets that we talked
about in that Six Impossible Episodes earlier this year. As
(14:59):
the war on individual cities and towns fell and were
retaken with huge casualties on both sides, including amongst civilians.
So the nationalist force would take a city and execute
Republican supporters, only for the Republican force to do the
same thing after taking it back, or the reverse would
happen regardless, though the death toll was immense and the
(15:22):
civil war was marked by atrocities on both sides of
the fighting. On October one, ninety six, the nationalist side
named Franco its head of state. By that point, the
other leading generals had been killed in combat or plane crashes.
He started further consolidating the various parties and factions to
try to make one unified nationalist side. One of these,
(15:46):
the Falone or Phalanx Party, became an official nationalist state
party in April of ninety seven. Four months later, thanks
to the nationalists pro Catholic leanings, the Vatican formally recognized
Franco as the Spanish head of state. At that point,
the International Brigades had also started arriving in Spain. The
(16:06):
International Brigades were, as the name suggests, volunteers from numerous nations.
A lot of the organization effort had been spearheaded by
the Soviet Union. These were people who came to Spain
from all these other places to fight on the side
of the loyalists. By the end of the war, more
than sixty thousand volunteers had served with the International brigades.
(16:28):
Most of them were from France, although people came from
roughly fifty countries. A lot of the people who volunteered
to fight where socialists, communists, students, and labor organizers. George
Orwell also fought with the Republican army and wrote homage
to Catalonia about the experience. By the spring of nineteen
thirty nine, Franco's nationalists were headed toward victory. Republican soldiers
(16:52):
and civilians had started fleeing towards France. Catalonia was the
last major Republican stronghold aside from Madrid, and after it fell,
the Republican side surrendered. Franco's force entered Madrid on March
twenty eight, and the war was formally over on April first,
ninety nine. The estimated death toll from the Spanish Civil
(17:13):
War is five hundred thousand people, although the Nationalists placed
the figure at more like a million people immediately after
the war was over. Spain's population at the time was
about twenty five million people, so about two percent of
the population was killed just in the war, but the
bloodshed didn't end when the war was over. As many
(17:34):
as a hundred thousand people disappeared after the war as
the nationalist regime started executing people with Republicans sympathies. Hundreds
of thousands more were made political prisoners. Republicans were also exiled,
and people all across the political spectrum died of starvation
and disease after the war or left Spain in the
(17:54):
wake of it. Franco became Spain's ruler in a government
that technically had a parliamentary system but was really a
military dictatorship. The parliament was more like an advisory body
than an actual legislative government branch, and Franco was the
sole authority over policies and decisions. Franco's government restored power
(18:14):
to the Catholic Church and did not tolerate dissent. Laws
restricted civic freedoms, including the freedom of speech, and people
who opposed the government were tried in military courts and
given sentences that were harsh and arbitrary. On September one,
ninety nine, just five months after the end of the
Spanish Civil War, Germany invaded Poland, which marks the beginning
(18:37):
of Europe's involvement in World War Two, and it seemed
likely that Spain would ally with the access powers of
Italy and Germany, especially given Italy and Germany's military assistance
on the nationalist side during the Spanish Civil War. Spain's
dictatorship was also more aligned with Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy than it was with the Allied Powers, but Franco
(19:00):
proved to have the same kind of self preservation that
he did back in his early years of army service.
He met with both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and
discussed what it would take for Spain to join the
war on their side. Spain wanted territory after the war
was over, including Gibraltar and Morocco, and Spain also wanted
(19:20):
huge amounts of assistance to help with the recovery from
the Civil War. Neither Italy nor Germany was willing to
agree to Spain's terms, finding them way too demanding. Hitler
is widely reported to have said after this meeting that
he'd quote rather have three or four teeth pulled than
ever have to have a meeting with Franco again. So
(19:42):
Spain sympathized with the Access Powers but mostly stayed neutral
in World War Two. But as it seemed increasingly likely
that the Access Powers were going to lose, Franco started
making gestures to the Allies. For example, Franco allowed Allied
pilots who were shot down free passage through Spain so
that they could get back to their units via Portugal.
(20:04):
He allowed Jewish refugees similar passage through Spain. Spain's relative
neutrality during World War Two was not enough to gain
the trust of other world leaders after the war was over,
though Franco was described as the last surviving Fascist dictator. Consequently,
Spain was barred from joining the United Nations, and the
(20:24):
other United Nations member states withdrew their ambassadors out of Madrid.
Spain was also left out of the Marshal Plan that
was meant to aid Western Europe's recovery after the war
was over. However, Spain's international isolation did not last very
long as the Cold War grew between the United States
and the Soviet Union. Franco was vocally anti communist, as
(20:48):
we noted in our episode on the mirraor Ball Sisters.
The United States was willing to overlook a lot when
it came to nations that opposed communism. The United States
and Spain started re establishing more normal diplomatic relationships in ninety.
In nineteen fifty three, the two nations signed a military
Assistance packed that involved allowing the US to build military
(21:10):
bases in Spain in exchange for economic aid. Spain was
allowed to join the United Nations in nineteen fifty five.
By that point, Spain was at least technically a monarchy again.
The NINTI seven Law of Succession, which was passed in
part to make Spain's government more palatable to other nations,
had established that Spain was a monarchy and that Franco
(21:33):
was just acting as a regents until naming a successor,
but this law didn't set any kind of timeline for
that to happen. It gave Franco the freedom to be
regent's kind of in quotation marks for life. In the
nineteen fifties and sixties, student protests led Franco's regime to
relax some of its more authoritarian policies at least somewhat,
(21:53):
but there was still ongoing resistance to Franco's rule along
with violence from separatists. This was particularly true among Basque nationalists,
but to be clear, the Basques were not the only
separatists in Spain. Spain's remaining colonies also pressed for independence,
with Morocco becoming independent of both Spain and France in
(22:13):
nineteen fifty six. In nineteen sixty nine, Franco finally named
his successor, Prince Juan Carlos, the grandson of Alfonso. Franco
continued acting as regent until nineteen seventy three, although he
continued to work behind the scenes after that until his
health prevented it. He died in Madrid on November twentieth,
(22:34):
nineteen seventy five, after more than a year of very
serious illnesses. Franco's burial place is what brought us to
doing an episode on him today, and we're going to
get to that after we pause for a little sponsor break.
After Juan Carlos became King of Spain, he and his
(22:56):
Prime Minister, Adolpho Suarez Gonzalez started reforming the Spanish government.
A new constitution was passed on December six with almost
unanimous support. This constitution established Spain as a constitutional monarchy,
with the monarch in an a political role. That constitution
(23:17):
also establishes that Spanish citizens are equal under the law,
and it includes fundamental rights and freedoms like the freedom
of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of privacy. This was,
of course, not the end of strife in Spain, but
one Carlos was able to make sweeping changes that modernized Spain,
protected civil rights, and restored democracy. Ironically, a big factor
(23:41):
in his power to do that was that he was
following Francisco Franco as head of state. Franco had given
himself very broad powers, and after following him, Juan Carlos
used that power to make big changes. Yeah, he basically
used that power that Franco had had passed on to
him to do the opposite it of what Franco had
done during his time as dictator, and these reforms were
(24:05):
really not what a lot of people expected of the
new king. Juan Carlos had very vocally praised Franco when
he was named successor, and then after Franco's death, he
made the Franco family part of the Spanish nobility. So
Francisco Franco's daughter was the first Duchess of Franco, but
Juan Carlos had also started secretly meeting and planning with
(24:27):
Democratic reformers long before Franco even died. The king also
oversaw Franco's funeral and his burial in the Valley of
the Fallen outside of Madrid. The Valley of the Fallen
is an immense monument whose construction started a year after
the Spanish Civil War ended, and it went on for
twenty years. It's a basilica and crypt at the foot
(24:48):
of a cliff, with a massive granite cross on top
of the cliff. It's really hard to describe the sheer
immensity of this whole thing, and during its construction, Franco
had described I this monument and it's building as an
act of atonement and reconciliation, one that was meant to
bring Spain together. However, it was also built by Republican
(25:11):
political prisoners. The circumstances of that building are described as
everywhere from forced labor to political prisoners being promised time
off of their sentences if they worked on this being built.
It was also intended from the start to basically be
a monument to Franco and to be his own massive tomb.
(25:32):
After the monument was finished, the bodies of thirty three thousand,
eight hundred forty seven people who had been killed during
the war were exhumed and reinterred in the surrounding forest
to increase the scale of the monument. This was often
done without the permission or knowledge of the families, and
records were also really spotty, so in many cases people
(25:54):
whose family members remains were relocated now have no idea
exactly where they are, and there are ongoing legal battles
to exhume, identify, and return people's remains. They're really heartbreaking
stories and all of this, and as far as people
who were like, Okay, I'm looking for my grandfather, meticulously
(26:15):
tracing the process of where their grandfather was, finally figuring
out exactly where he was killed and where the people
killed in that battle were buried, only to be told
that everyone there was just dug up and transported to
the Valley of the Fallen without anybody keeping track of
exactly where. Only two people, though, are buried inside the
(26:39):
church itself. At the Valley of the Fallen, there's Francisco
Franco and then there's the Falange party leader Jose Antonio
Primo de Rivera, and today admission into This church is
only supposed to be for religious purposes, but for decades
people came to leave flowers on Franco's grave, or to
spit on it, or vandalize it or try to blow
(27:01):
it up. People visit the Valley of the Falling because
they lost family members in the war, but they also
visit annually on Franco's birthday to memorialize him. Over the years,
there have been repeated proposals to exhume Francisco's remains and
move them somewhere else, to a more modest location that
isn't effectively a monument to a dictator, someplace that wouldn't
(27:24):
become a pilgrimage site for fascists. But those proposals have
proven to be incredibly controversial. Unlike Germany and Italy, Spain
did not suffer a military defeat during World War Two.
There was no war crimes investigation, no formal attempt to
seek justice and atonement after the Civil War was over. Instead,
(27:45):
the exact opposite happened. In ninety seven, political leaders agreed
to what was called the Pact of Forgetting. Sometimes this
is described as a packed to not ever discuss the
Civil War again, but that's not exactly right. It was
more like a negotiation among the various political factions to
not let the war get in the way of working
(28:06):
together to form a government, and not to invest government
resources into trying to resolve the past. This was followed
by a nineteen seventy seven amnesty law that legally formalized
that agreement. This law released political prisoners and allowed people
who had been forced out of Spain to return, but
it also protected the people who committed wartime atrocities from
(28:28):
ever being prosecuted. All this means that nobody on any
side was ever held accountable for the many atrocities of
the Spanish Civil War and the fascist regime that followed,
including Franco. There was no investigation, no truth commission, no
civic commemoration of milestone anniversaries of the war. Spain instead
(28:48):
just tried to leave the past in the past and
move on. That has started to change only very recently.
Spain's two thousand seven Law of Historical Memory condemned Franco
in his regime and established terms for removing some monuments
from the Franco era. It also recognized the people who
fought on both sides of the war and established the
(29:09):
victims of the war and the dictatorship and their descendants
could seek restitution. The attempts to identify bodies in mass
graves that we've talked about on the show before mostly
started after the passage of this two thousand seven law.
Just this year, Spain announced plans to establish a truth commission.
The Historical Memory Law and legislation to exhume Franco's remains
(29:33):
and similar steps have generally been taken when Socialists have
had the majority in Spain's government, and that's been over
the objection of Spain's conservative parties. Conversely, when conservative parties
have had power, they've either tried to roll back those
earlier laws or stopped supporting them or allocating money in
the budget to carry them out. And a lot of
(29:55):
people feel like the Historical Memory Law and other similar
legislat action is just digging up a horror from the
past that should be left there. All of this has
contributed to Spain being really divided over the legacy of
Francisco Franco and how he should be remembered. On one
side are people who consider him a fascist dictator whose
(30:16):
regime murdered or imprisoned hundreds of thousands of people following
an attempted coup against a democratically elected government. On the
other side are people who think this attempted coup was
a necessary intervention against communism and that the Republicans would
have treated their opponents the exact same way if they
had won, and since the Republican forces also committed massacres
(30:39):
and atrocities during the war, there are also a lot
of people living in Spain whose family members were killed
by the loyalists and not by Franco's regime, because Franco's
dictatorship was motivated more by a military style efficiency than
by a specific political doctrine. Another argument was that he
was sort of not that bad as fascist dictators go.
(31:03):
This reminds me of growing up in North Carolina and
the way we would talk about slavery and history class,
and it was sort of like, well, we didn't have
nearly as many slaves as South Carolina, so it's not
that bad, which is just not a very valid argument.
There's a whole lot of he was a dictator, but
(31:23):
he was a good dictator, or he was authoritarian but
not totalitarian. His supporters also note that he never smoked
or drank and is never known to have had an
extramarital affair, and they point to this as evidence that
he was a moral man rather than being a war criminal. Plus,
Spain's economy started booming in the nineteen sixties, which continued
(31:45):
until Franco's death. This period is nicknamed the Spanish Miracle.
Franco himself didn't really have anything to do with it,
apart from handing the country's economic leadership over to relatively
young ministers who liberalized the economy, but it still means
that some people remember him as having finally rescued Spain
from the economic devastation that followed the Civil War and
(32:08):
that went on for decades afterward. Spain has also faced
a huge economic crisis over the past decade, so many
people who remember the sixties remember them as a time
when Franco brought prosperity which democracy has now taken away. Plus,
all those decades leading up to the Spanish Civil War
were very turbulent, with increasing division and a series of
(32:31):
coups and attempted cus before the war itself even started.
By comparison, Franco's dictatorship was kind of calm. All of
this is complicated by the fact that Spain has never
had a thorough accounting of the war and Franco's dictatorship,
and it is divisive. One poll conducted in July asked
(32:53):
are you in favor of removing the remains of Francisco
Franco from the Valley of the Fallen? Just under forty
one percent said yes. To the question do you think
it's a good time to address the issue, more than
fifty said no. It's also really still unfolding. Franco's descendants
have said that they would like to have him reinterred
(33:14):
in the family crypt at La Almudena Cathedral in Madrid
with full military honors, but that plan has brought on
criticism that it would just make his burial place even
more accessible and just as likely to be made into
basically a new shrine, a shrine that would become a
monument to fascism. And we are recording this episode on
(33:36):
December eleven, at which point the issue is still not settled,
which means that I fully believe that three days from now, Yeah,
some huge news story will break that will change everything
that we have just said about where it currently stands. Yeah,
it's that is a trend. When we record episodes that
reach into the current era. Yet it's pretty much immediately
(33:57):
after we closed the door on record NG then suddenly
there's brand new news. I mean, the most recent articles
that I read about this we're from yesterday and we're
you know, we went and we go into the studio
at ten o'clock on Tuesday mornings, So it was like
three o'clock yesterday afternoon was my last news update on
the status of the burial place of Francisco Franco or
(34:18):
in all way until about twenty minutes after the episode publishes.
Since we're prepping for holidays, we're prepping and invain. Yeah,
so so we'll be like trying to have Christmas and
madly trying to uh acknowledge that things have shifted. Yep. Completely.
Do you have a little bit of listener mail. I
(34:39):
knew and it is from Katie. Katie says, longtime listener
and huge fan at Katie here. A month ago you
did an episode on Crystal Knock, which later raised the
discussion about the evolution of the name. For that night
last week, I happened to be in Berlin at the
Museum the Topography of Terrors, where coincidentally they were showing
(35:00):
a special exhibit on that night. The exhibit itself was
called Crystal Knocked, but then throughout the text of the
exhibit the event was referred to as Reich's Pogrom Knocked.
I found that interesting and thought you might as well.
They didn't really address the evolution of the name, but
did address how awareness of the event has grown in
the past decades. Attached our photos of the exhibit. Overall,
(35:22):
it was incredibly moving, as the was the museum itself
built over the block that used to contain the headquarters
of the s S and the Gestapo. Also an episode
suggestion in pictures the Gate of Ishtar. So she goes
on to talk about the Gate of Ishtar, and this
email included six really beautiful photographs um of the gate
(35:43):
and then also of parts of that museum exhibit. So
thank you so much, Katie. That was an interesting look
at how a museum in Berlin might address the fact
that people may remember something by one name when that
name is not necessarily the preferred language in Germany. Now,
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast where a history podcast at how
(36:05):
Stuff Works dot com. And then we are all over
social media at miss in History. That's where you'll find
our Facebook, our Pinterest, our Instagram, and our Twitter. You
can come to our website, which is missed in History
dot com, where you will find show notes of all
the episodes that Holly and I have worked on together
and a searchable archive of every episode. And you can
find and subscribe to our podcast on app, podcast, the
(36:26):
I Heart Radio app, and wherever you get podcasts. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff Works dot com
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